Shades of Gray
by tider58
Summary: Summer used to mean Popsicles and bare feet and freedom. Losing Buffy changed all that. Oneshot, Spike and Dawn friendship.


Summer had always been Dawn's favorite season.

Well, in the implanted reality she "remembered," it had. (These days she was always modifying thoughts that way, because it seemed sloppy thinking otherwise, and she was nothing if not detail-oriented.)

Summer meant freedom. No school. Short shorts. Sandals or bare feet and cotton-candy-pink nail polish. Popsicles on the front porch, afternoons at the beach, sun-bleached highlights in her long chestnut hair.

Then came the Summer of Grief. A gaping black hole had been punched through the center of their collective world, leaving no desire for Popsicles or pink toenails. The very idea of beach-lounging was somehow offensive, wrong. What this Anti-summer delivered in spades was silence, loaded and heavy and sagging with words no one had the heart to voice. It offered petty arguments, trivial little annoyances that strained the seams of even the strongest bonds: Willow and Tara, for instance, and, perhaps less surprisingly, Xander and Anya. Dawn and … well, everyone. It offered lots of tears, closed doors at every turn, and a bucketload of bitterness. And, in the oddly similar cases of Giles and Spike, far too much drinking.

She escaped the sickening confines of the Buffyless house as often as possible, and always found her way to him. Wrapped tight in the bonds of guilt and pain, Dawn's vampire friend was not often good company by conventional standards, but it was enough. Sometimes they didn't even talk, just sat on the ratty couch in front of Spike's old TV set, studiously not watching some inane sitcom rerun and taking grim solace in each other's presence.

Sometimes she fell asleep there, head pillowed on his lap, and when the inevitable nightmares made her whimper and moan and call out for her sister, he would gently stroke her hair and soothe her in husky whispers until she stilled.

One night she appeared in his doorway to find him sprawled out on top of a sarcophagus, a near-empty bottle of Jack clutched tight in his dangling hand. He didn't raise his head to look at her.

"Go home," he told her. "Not up for visitors."

"Too bad," she replied disinterestedly. "I'm stuck here now. It's dark, and besides, I saw three vamps on the way over."

This time he did look up, to fix her with a dark scowl. "Bloody stupid of you, Niblet. Should know better."

"Sorry."

His eyes narrowed. "What's that you've got on?"

Dawn glanced down at the shirt she had taken out of Buffy's laundry basket. It still smelled like her, and she'd worn it because she felt like doing some penance. Returning her gaze to Spike's, she shrugged.

"That's hers," he said fuzzily. "Why'd you put that on?"

"I don't know. I just felt like it."

"You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't wear her stuff."

"Why not? She's not going to wear it anymore."

He sat up with more effort than the maneuver would ordinarily require and fixed Dawn with a scathing look over the top of the bottle. " 's not the point, Niblet. It's _hers_. I don't want you coming here smelling like her."

"Like who?" Dawn asked suddenly, cocking her head in that way she had unconsciously adopted from him. "Why doesn't anyone say her name anymore? I'm wearing _Buffy's_ shirt, Spike. Say it."

Blue eyes flickered in the candlelight. "You wanna watch it, Bit. I'm in no mood for games."

Undeterred, Dawn stepped closer to the sarcophagus he was perched on top of. His eyes bored into her, but she held her ground, challenging, completely unafraid. "If you're going to grieve for her, the least you can do is say her name. _Buffy_..."

"Dawn, I'm warning you."

And he was—she could see the warning in his eyes, clear as could be. _Leave it,_ that look said, _you're digging at a wound too fresh to touch, and my self-control's not what it used to be._ She knew she was treading on dangerously thin ice—provoking a drunk, emotionally wretched vampire is never the brightest of ideas—but she found she couldn't let it go. It suddenly seemed crucial that she hear the word from his lips. "Say her name, Spike. Do it. Please."

"Shut your mouth," he said in a soft, deadly tone.

"_Buffy._ It's not so hard once you get used to it again." His hand tightened on the neck of the JD bottle, and the muscles in his jaw bulged tight as he clenched his teeth together. She knew she was approaching the danger zone, red alert, it was all over his face and in the air between them, and she didn't care. If she kept pushing he would go into game face, and then she thought she might back off—but probably not.

"No one says her name anymore, Spike. I hate them for it. It's stupid, it's a ridiculously weak human thing to do, as if not saying it can make it better, or make losing her easier. She's _everywhere_ and no one will talk about her. I thought you'd be different. You loved her, right? Or was that just bullshit? If you loved her, just say her name. Not _Slayer_; that's a copout. I want to hear you say her real name. Buffy. Buffy. _Buffy._ _BUF—!_"

"_SHUT UP!"_ he roared. The bottle flew at the wall in a spectacular explosion of glittering glass. In a flash he was off the sarcophagus, his eyes amber and his face contorted into a monster's visage. Before she had time to react, his open hand flew out and met the side of her head with a solid _whack_. A sob burst from Dawn and she stumbled away from him, tears filling her eyes and then spilling freely. Spike instantly doubled over with a shout, clutching his own head in agony.

When his pain passed, he slowly straightened up and looked at her, his former fury gone as if it had never been and replaced with shocked guilty horror. "Bit..." he said gruffly. "Fuck. I'm sorry, sweet. I didn't— Are you all right, baby?"

Rubbing her temple, Dawn fixed wide, betrayed blue eyes on him and flinched away reflexively when he reached clumsily toward her, supplicating. He caught her and pulled her, unresisting, into his arms. Resting his chin in her hair, he spoke in a soft, scraping voice, each word gutting him as he uttered it. "You're right, Bit. You know I loved her; you know that. Still, and always. I loved her. Buffy … Buffy … _Buffy._"

He held her and consoled her, muttering the name over and over into the silky softness of her hair like a mantra, trying in the only way he knew to erase the affront. She forgave him perhaps too easily, her arms finally slipping around his slender form and returning his embrace. Too easy, maybe, but it's all she could do, in a summer that held nothing but shades of gray.

The season of grief passed slowly.


End file.
